I will be wearing my Old English D replica sweater (not the 09 version, the original) and will be glued to the TV. I think the score will be either really low because of bad ice or really high because of some players being able to play VERY well on bad ice. But the former seems more likely.

The Red Wings will jump out to a customary 14-3 lead after 2 periods with Draper scoring a hat trick to make SeeinRed go nuts, and then go on to win by 10 touchdowns to finally make one of my 10 touchdown predictions come true.

"When you want to measure yourself, you don't measure yourself against, no disrespect to TORONTO or any other team that I can think of right now, you measure yourself against the Detroit Red Wings. They are the best in the league, and whether they won last year's Cup or didn't win last year's Cup, they're the measuring stick." - Bruce Boudreau

From MLIVE:Red Wings' Chris Chelios to play in Winter Classic by Ansar Khan Wednesday December 31, 2008, 4:09 PMWings defenseman Chris Chelios just confirmed that he will be playing in Thursday's Winter Classic. It's only fitting, since he's a Chicago native who's attended more than 200 Cubs games at Wrigley Field and likely is playing his final NHL season. No word yet on who'll be sitting out.

So it looks like Doc Emerick's voice is messed up so Dave Strader is doing play by play for NBC and Ed Olczyk on color commentary. That seems fair to me because Strader still loves the Wings and it's always very obvious when he does nationally televised games that he's rooting for Detroit. This will be a nice counterbalance to Ed Olczyk who I don't mind but always is clearly rooting for Chicago. Does anyone know if Pierre McLoser is going to be suspended from a cable above the ice?